Dish · 4 kitchens in 3 cities
Pastrami and salt beef
Brisket cured in salt and spice — smoked for pastrami, boiled for salt beef — sliced hot into bread.
Nobody paid to be here. Each kitchen is described from its own menu where it publishes one, unranked, so each note says how that kitchen makes it.
In London
Salt beef beigel
Beigel Bake · Brick Lane · ~£8 pp
Hot salt beef sliced to order into a beigel, the East End bagel, with mustard and pickle. Our one order at the counter.
In New York
Hot Pastrami
2nd Ave Deli · Murray Hill · ~$36 pp
Pastrami, beef cured with peppercorns and smoked, sliced hot and piled high on rye. One sandwich feeds most people, so split it beside a knish.
Short Rib Pastrami Suya
Tatiana · Lincoln Square · ~$110 pp
Short rib cured as deli pastrami, then crusted with suya, West Africa's peanut-and-chilli grill spice, with red cabbage, mustard jus and caraway coco bread. New York in two accents, and the main we'd share.
In Amsterdam
Broodje half om
Van Dobben · Rembrandtplein · ~€10 pp
Half and half: cured salt beef and boiled liver stacked on one bun, a sandwich from Jewish Amsterdam. The first broodje, the sandwich roll, we'd ask for.